A Promise of Love

by Karen Ranney

  Her nationality was not to blame. English or Scot, this was an act of cruelty, of the strong victimizing the weak. It was not one of borders, of politics, or one nation against another. It was man against woman.

  He held Judith until her tremors began to subside. Only then did he raise her in his arms and carry her gently home.

  Judith had not spoken of that day since, but in her eyes was a despair as evident as their azure color. Her face was drawn and taut, she'd lost weight. Because he was so attuned to her, because he had once won the battle of overcoming her fear, Alisdair recognized the depths of her retreat. Although she did not shrink from his touch, she had gone to that other place in her mind, a place where nightmares were the only constant.

  For that, he damned the English.

  "Did she eat today, then?"

  "A little broth, a few scraps of bread. Not very much." He arranged the coverings over Meggie and stepped back from the bed.

  Judith stood so still, so tightly held within her own composure that she appeared as brittle, and as breakable, as glass. Could any one touch her? As a man, could he ever reach her? He felt unwanted and superfluous, both as a physician and as a husband. Even as laird, he could do nothing. The knowledge clawed at him with a hundred talons.

  Alisdair could do no more than what he did now, extend his arms around his wife, imparting wordless comfort and an offer of refuge while she stood rigid and unmoving within his embrace.

  He placed a soft and passionless kiss upon her forehead, then moved to the door. "Time is all she needs," he said, wanting to say something to dispel the look in Judith's eyes.

  Judith accepted his words the same way she would have accepted a bouquet of poison ivy from a child, with kindness and tenderness, appreciating the sentiment, if not the gift. Alisdair didn’t understand, not truly, but the words sounded well meaning and caring.

  Time. Such a pleasant notion. As if time alone could salve some wounds. As if time would matter a tinker's damn. The clicking of a clock altered nothing. Oh, outward wounds healed, bruises faded, bones knitted. But what about the other wounds, less readily apparent, just as deep, just as painful. They ate away at the soul.

  Judith stared out at the sea.

  Time.

  It was a panacea held out to the despairing. Get through today and tomorrow will be better. But when tomorrow was no better, hope was held out in the other hand. The day after will be much better than today. And on and on and on until time became only a way to measure misery. And the blinding expectation that it would one day cease became only a small pulsating light in the star filled heavens. A small star to wish upon. Please, God, make it better.

  Time would not heal this wound.

  Judith knew it better than anyone.

  Time would do nothing but dull the sense of invasion, it would not erase it. It would not negate the knowledge that her body had betrayed her by its very receptiveness. As if she could have sealed it up to prevent the intrusion. Time would not mitigate the sick horror of being violated in spirit as well as in flesh. Of being unable to prevent it. Of living through it.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at Meggie's pale face.

  "Have you ever seen evil, Meggie?" she asked in a calm, dispassionate voice, as though her listener were awake. On some level, however, she knew Meggie heard; the only reason she knew was that she had been as Meggie was right now. She slept, but it was not sleep she craved as much as the opiate of oblivion. After a while, the body had rested enough, the mind remained in a white cloud of almost wakefulness, prevented from rousing by a wounded soul.

  The torpor was never quite deep enough.

  So Judith gave her friend the only gift that might help. The truth.

  "I know the face of it well," Judith said softly, looking down at her hands. They were entwined with each other, normal hands, if a bit wear worn and red. There was a scratch on her thumb where a splinter had pierced the skin. Alisdair had washed it with something that had burned, while he’d lectured her on the dangers of open wounds. As if she’d not known.

  The words Judith spoke were halting, their slow cadence came not from reluctance as much as a sense of being dredged from the bottom of a pit. Once she had a nightmare of falling, down, down into blackness, tumbling into a deep, bottomless void - nothing to reach for, nothing to hold onto, nothing to stop that endless fall. The poisonous shame she felt about herself lived in that endless well, a night creature slithering away from light, exposure. It was not an easy thing to speak the words, to tell the tale. She spoke of herself in the third person, as if Judith were the name of a woman she knew, a close friend. As if the story had not happened to her, but to someone else, some poor creature who should now only be pitied.

  After a while, her voice lost its plodding quality and Judith forget to say "she" instead of "I". Instead of a monotone, grief began to tinge her voice, her speech was higher, more finely honed. A deep need to swallow stopped her for a few moments and it was tears she drank down, unknown and unaware. They splashed against her face, too, inner nature's rain. It was the first time she'd ever told the entire story to anyone. Her marriage to Anthony, her terror at learning what kind of union she'd been tied to, Bennett, and the fear he brought to the once simple and ordinary occurrence of nightfall.

  When Meggie's eyes opened, fixed upon the face of her friend, Judith was unaware, as trapped in the telling of the story as she'd been living it.

  "Anthony first introduced me to his brother the night we arrived in London. It seemed that Anthony and Bennett were very close, had always shared things. Little things like shirts, cravats, boots. Then, bigger things like horses, careers, whores. And then a wife."

  Anthony especially liked to watch Bennett strike her, whipping her until the blood flowed freely. Bennett enjoyed her screams more than a stunned and docile acceptance. She had been the plaything for his restless nights, when the barmaids or tavern wenches were either unavailable, too highly priced, or boring in their mute response to his cruelty. She had been the victim of his experiments in pain.

  "The first time, they had to tie me down. The second time, they simply force fed me enough brandy. Maybe it was the fifth time, I don't know, but all they had to do was tie me loosely. I wouldn't have escaped by then. I was too disgusted about what they had done to my body, to my mind, that I could barely show my face in the light of day. I could not bear to share the sunlight with others. Whenever I chanced to meet someone's eyes, I was the one who looked away. I was too dirty.”

  Judith had thought, at first, that she would die from it. She had even prayed for death as her husband helped tie her to the bed willingly, eagerly, watching with enthusiasm as she was brutally raped. Her nights were filled with terror, days encircled in numbness, aching shame. But she did not die. The body did not expire that quickly; the spirit succumbed much easier.

  Her fingers loosened their death grip upon themselves, her eyes raised to the open window. "Part of me just closed, my humanness, I think. I wasn't a person anymore, I was no more important than a thing, like a candle, or a chair. I wouldn't let myself feel anything when it was happening.”

  One terrible morning, Judith came too close to losing herself, becoming like the poor demented creatures at St. Mary of Bethlehem Hospital. She was alone in the house, the silence of it surrounding her like a cloud. Instead of rising at dawn, she’d remained in her chamber, sitting in the middle of the bed, her arms crossed over the top of her head, rocking back and forth endlessly, the sounds from her lips that of the keening of some poor trapped animal in desperate pain.. It was almost as if she were not in her body anymore, but floating nearby, powerless to silence herself, or heal her mind. For most of the morning, she remained like this, until sanity returned, a drop at a time.

  She had been too much like Meggie, trapped in a world of no thoughts, no memories, simply experiencing an endless white fog which cushioned pain and despair. Yet, she discovered that that world demanded too much in order to became a lifelong
inhabitant. Into this whiteness, this blankness, had come a spark, a chance to survive, an opportunity to overcome. Hope, itself.

  From that day on, Judith planned.

  "Forgive me, Meggie. Forgive me, for bringing you pain. For bringing him here."

  Because of her, Meggie had been raped. Because of her, Alisdair was in danger. Because of her, the clan was in peril. She had, unknowingly and certainly unwillingly brought danger to the Highlands, in its most odious form, true evil. An evil which had not altered despite place or time. It remained the same, an asp in a basket, ready to strike when the lid was raised.

  "How did ye' escape?" Malcolm's voice came from far away. Judith turned to find him standing in the doorway, his scowl replaced by features carefully wiped clean of any emotion. Any other time, she’d have felt an aching shame that he'd heard her story. Now, that emotion was simply buried beneath the guilt and grief she felt.

  Judith smiled, a sad tipped smile that Malcolm found particularly hard to bear, especially since she looked straight at him, her loch eyes betraying not a ripple.

  "He died," she said, simply.

  When she'd stepped away from the stiff and cold figure of her husband and watched as the lid was nailed upon his wooden casket, not all of her relief was due to Anthony's death. King George II had done her a favor, too, by posting Bennett's regiment far away.

  Into Scotland, and she'd not known.

  CHAPTER 27

  Sophie roused slowly, her dreams having more substance than the present day. She blinked several times until they slowly faded. They had been too real, these recollections, too filled with the faces and the voices of those who no longer lived. She sighed, feeling the pain again, as if losing them once more.

  She waved away the plate Judith offered.

  "No, child, I am not hungry."

  Sophie looked pale, with splotches of red upon her face. Judith bent and kissed her brow, feeling the papery dryness of the woman's skin.

  Judith returned the plate to the kitchen. She’d taken a tray to Meggie’s room, but her friend had only turned away when she’d offered it. Still, she’d left the food.

  The hours Meggie slept had become fewer, her waking hours spent staring out the window. Still, she did not speak. Silence could both heal and imprison, Judith knew. It was Meggie’s decision which it would be. They’d not spoken of Judith’s confession a week ago. Occasionally, Meggie’s eyes would meet hers and there would be questions in their depths, but they were left unasked.

  Judith returned to Sophie's room with a basin of warm water and would have assisted the woman from her gown, a French confection of black, inset with rusty lace, but Sophie waved her away.

  "I’ve plenty of time to sleep, child," she said with a smile. "It is time with you I lack. I should spend my remaining hours with those I love, not dozing like a cat in the sun."

  Judith had no answer to such words. There was much about the Highlands that she could live without, but not Sophie's kindness and gentleness. What would she do without her?

  "Is anyone still in the kitchen?" Sophie asked, straightened her legs painfully.

  "Alisdair is helping with a difficult lambing." Malcolm had not shared their meal since the day he learned of her past.

  Strangely enough, he had not repeated what he’d heard at Meggie’s bedside. Judith had expected him to gloat of his knowledge of the depths of her degradation, waited for him to spread the story throughout the glen, but he’d evidently said nothing.

  She, herself, had not waited for the clan to ease their condemnation of her. Every day for the last week, she’d gone to the weaver's hut, one of the twins her escort on Alisdair's orders. Every day, she was shunned by the women, who knew she went to weave, to sit behind the clacking old loom and hum softly to herself while pretending her meager labor would make a difference. It wouldn't, and everyone knew it. But, it was a testament to her stubbornness, and theirs, that they continued to play this little game each day.

  Judith wished she could say that her hours alone in the weaving shed gave her something to think about other than Meggie. It would be a lie. The endless solitude, the rhythmic noise of the loom became second nature and only guilt occupied her thoughts. What emotions remained were apportioned for the MacLeod.

  "Come, child, for these old bones are telling me that I may not have much time."

  Judith placed her hand underneath Sophie's elbow and helped her to rise. Sophie smiled her thanks. She retrieved the candle from its holder beside the bed and held it out for Judith.

  "I have something to show you, child. You are the only one who can make a promise to me. The one I trust most to protect Alisdair when I'm no longer here."

  "Nonsense," Judith said, with a faint attempt at heartiness. "You will probably outlive us all, Granmere."

  "This is not the time to humor an old woman, child," Sophie said firmly, leaning a little on Judith. "I see death at my door each night and bid him wait until the morrow before he summons me. He sits upon my bedstead during the long hours and counts my breaths. I cannot see the future, Judith, but I can feel it. What I feel tells me that there is little time left."

  Again, Judith had no answer for her words, she could only assist the woman from the room and follow where that imperious cane pointed.

  It took them much longer than it would have a month ago, because of Sophie's waning strength. The only assistance Judith could offer was not to argue as she was led through the darkened courtyard and into the deserted keep.

  Their two horses were contentedly munching on feed stored in what looked to have been baptismal font. The room bore little resemblance to its former function as family chapel. The darkening sky peeped through the top of the tower, smoke stains marred the gutted interior. Something which looked like mildew, but smelled worse, grew lattice-like upon the inner walls. Only the altar remained intact, a stone edifice too large to have been torn down, its altar pieces melted to molten and twisted lumps of metal. It now served only as a storage shelf. The room stunk of animals and dampness and the lingering odor of burnt cloth. Not even the flooring had been spared. The colored tiles were chipped badly in places, and severely gouged in others. It was a scene of degradation and ruin that marked the rest of Tynan Castle.

  Sophie stopped and motioned for Judith to unlatch the heavy oak door leading to the other tower. She did, pushing the bar aside.

  They stood in the deserted circular room, bare except for the hay piled upon the floor, alone in the company of spiders and industrious mice. Judith fervently hoped that nothing else lurked there in the cover of darkness, that the candle would last as long as it was needed, that the sputter she heard was not a herald of total darkness.

  "Close the door, child," Sophie said, leaning weakly against one wall. She looked at the window, then the broad expanse of the hay strewn floor. Judith wondered if she were getting her bearings. Why were they here?

  "I feel the burden of my secret," Sophie whispered, acutely conscious that the sound circled the room and seemed to bounce back against them. "I would divulge it to you this night, before death robs me of my voice." She turned to Judith, but all that she could see of her was the shadowy outline of her pale face. The lone candle did little to illuminate either the room or its occupants.

  "Do you swear," Sophie said in a voice that echoed solemnly in the empty room, like a ghostly voice in a sepulcher, "to never speak of what you see this night to anyone outside of the clan MacLeod?"

  Judith nodded, bemused by the ceremonious and grave nature of Sophie's request.

  "Then come, Judith," Sophie said, satisfied.

  She shuffled to the wall upon which the high window was mounted, and walked slowly back to the door. Judith was not sure, but it looked as though the older woman was counting her steps. When Sophie summoned her, she knelt to where her cane pointed and began to shift the rushes from the floor. There, hidden by the matted hay, barely visible in the gloom, was an iron ring. Sophie stepped back, pleased. So, she had truly remember
ed.

  "'Tis the opening, Judith. Pull upon the ring, and we shall see what awaits us."

  Judith did what she was told, which was more difficult than expected. The door was cut from the same stone which made up the keep. Long moments later, she had finally lifted it a few inches from the ground. She placed both hands beneath it, and with a strength she had not known she possessed, flung the door away from its opening. It fell open with a thud, the sound only partially muted by the hay. She and Sophie looked at each other and then stood waiting. There were no sounds of rushing feet, no one came to investigate.

  Sophie handed her the candle and urged her down the steps. By the glow of the flickering light, Judith could see the lines of worry etched upon the older woman’s face and it was this concern, coupled with Granmere's flagging energy which propelled her down the steps. They were carved into the earth, no more than a few downward sloping niches wet with dampness.

  At first, the well exposed by the door was only a darkened pit. It was not until she reached the bottom step, when she lifted the candle that Judith realized what she was seeing. Glints of metal and shining things transformed themselves into claymores, dirks, ancient broadswords arrayed in long lines, only their hilts showing, their blades protected from the damp by the plaid of the MacLeod. On a rough shelf built into the side of the hidden cave stood the rusted shields of a hundred long dead ancestors. Near the bottom stood silver porringers, pitchers now almost black with tarnish, cutlery that gleamed brightly in the light of the candle. Off to the right sat the etched glass which belonged in the windows of the Lord's room. Almost at her feet sat a strange collection of long, round wooden reeds, with holes along their lengths and attached to a sunken bag.

  She knew exactly what she was looking at.

  The treasure of the MacLeod's. It was not the silver or the etched glass, or even the buried plaid or the presence of the pipes which would cause disaster to the clan MacLeod. It was the existence of the hoard of weapons arrayed with more care than the other valuables. The sight lingered in her mind long after she had emerged from the dirt room, handed the candle back to Sophie, and as quietly as possible, lowered the stone door back into place.